Comment by fennecfoxy
3 hours ago
Tbf "is it a crime" is hard for even a single lawyer to answer because it depends on: who you are, your skin colour, how rich you are, your sex, whether it's a white collar crime or not, did you commit the crime on behalf of a corpo, etc.
But we like to pretend that the justice system delivers justice evenhandedly I suppose.
No it does not. The law defines what a crime is. That you are bummed out about how it is applied, does not change the question, whether it is a crime. One thing is the definition of what constitutes a crime/felony/misdemeanor, another thing is the application and the punishment meted out.
That's not quite the case in common law countries. In countries like the UK and the US, the interpretation of the law as written is ultimately decided by the court, meaning that the definition of what constitutes a crime/felony/misdemeanor is subjective. The more courts that attempt to interpret that specific law, the more 'jurisprudence' builds up, meaning that the interpretation applied in a previous decision can certainly have an impact on a future decision.